I-Corps: Removing Oxygen for Food Storage and Transport

Award ID: 2021553

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of a method to remove oxygen from food storage and transport containers to decrease produce spoilage. Every year $160 billion worth of food is wasted in America at every stage of the supply chain. Improving food storage would improve this figure and enable environmentally sustainable transport options. The proposed technology may be implemented in several possible stages of the supply chain from farm storage, transportation (truck or ship), grocery store coolers, and for home use in personal refrigerators. This project will explore various paths for technology translation. This I-Corps project is based on the development of a reversible reaction of excited oxygen with a novel material. The material acts like an oxygen sponge, absorbing oxygen when irradiated with light, and releasing oxygen under warm, dark conditions. This allows the consumption of oxygen to be controlled using light, while the release can be manipulated with heat. The reaction occurs at low partial pressures of oxygen and can create oxygen-free environments. The oxygen may be stored in the material and released under gentle heating. This material and process may be used to remove or reduce oxygen from a space, creating an anerobic environment. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Program Director: Ruth Shuman